I need to know where the SimCity 4 (both original and Deluxe/Rush Hour versions) registry entries are located so I can edit them. My problem is that when I try to launch the game it tells me that it cant find the game discs in the disc drive. I bought the SimCity Box retail version at Best Buy and then ripped .iso images from the discs. I have the images mounted in a virtual drive. But even still I get this error (even though I didnt get any errors when i used the disc images to install the game from the virtual drives). E drive is my physical disc drive but the virtual drives (i have 15 of them) use different letters. I have heard that i can change the drive letter that the game looks for in the Registry. I would rather not resort to using no cd cracks if i dont have to because whoever provides them may have put viruses, etc. in the files,or the crack might break some functionality in the game, and i dont know how to hex edit game executables. If anyone can help, please reply soon.

« Last Edit: January 04, 2010, 12:54:47 AM by Enigma »

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Go to RegEdit, go down to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE", Go to "SOFTWARE", scroll down until you see "Maxis", expand the folder, click on the SimCity 4 folder and you should see a "CD Drive" entry in the right column. Here's a picture from my machine:

I hope this helps... also, this was done on my Vista machine, so you may/may not see the same thing... It's very easy to change things from there, post again if you have any problems

Re: Where Do I Find SimCity 4/Deluxe/Rush Hour Registry Entries?

i have yet another problem: Windows 7 wont let me edit (or even view) the Registry!!! when i type in regedit.exe under the Run command in Start Menu, it gives a message saying that registry editing is not allowed on my system. But i'm not on a corporate/educational/etc. network and this is my personal laptop. i am the administrator and this is the only active account on this machine. but i'm afraid resolving that is out of the bounds of this community. but if you (adroman) or anyone else here knows how to quickly resolve this then by all means tell me. Thanks.

One more thing: do i need to change the drive letter in the "Installed From" entry as well? and, if so, does it have to be the same letter that i assign in the "CD Drive" entry?

i'm also assuming that this Registry trick will work for other games as well. i have different versions of Grand Theft Auto, Sid Meier's Civilization IV, Age Of Empires, etc. and i'm thinking that if this works for SimCity then it will also work for other games as well since most of them also request a disc to be in the drive to be played.

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Re: Where Do I Find SimCity 4/Deluxe/Rush Hour Registry Entries?

i was able to run Registry Editor using your advice, but the file to run it is called regedt32.exe, under C:\Windows\System32 directory. i am sure, however, that a file called regedit.exe also exists in 7, i used it just a few weeks ago. i looked exactly where you told me to, but there are no values for maxis or simcity in that location. i even in twent to Edit> Findhe editor and searched for those 2 terms and came up with 2 different results, for which i captured screenshots and saved them as .jpg files. but even those results gave no hint as to where the Cd Drive entry for SC might be. if you can tell me how to post them then i'll be glad to. thanks for any help.

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"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy..........and ideas are bulletproof".

to be perfectly honest, I don't understand why you don't just use your original discs... Anyway, check all through all of the files in the RegEdit and see if there is a Maxis one there, it might be somewhere else on Win7.

Re: Where Do I Find SimCity 4/Deluxe/Rush Hour Registry Entries?

I need to know this because i have made iso images from my discs and have them mounted in virtual drives. Bu t every time i want to play it says it cant find a disc in the drive so i assume its looking in my physical drive and finding nothing. Where are these entries located in the 7 registry, i have installed the game and cant find the entry i need that will allow me to change the drive letter extension that the SC4 executable looks in to find the disc. for more info read this topic:http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=9828.0

if there is another way to do this then just post it.

thanks for any help.

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"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy..........and ideas are bulletproof".

Re: Where Do I Find SimCity 4/Deluxe/Rush Hour Registry Entries?

the reason i dont just use the originals are because no matter how careful i am with discs, they always get scratched up to the point of not being usable over a course of time. theres something called wear and tear you know??? and anyway, if i carried around discs for all my games (i'm very mobile and like to game while on the go) then i would have to carry enough to fill an entire backpack for all my games. however i did find a temporary solution for the problem. for my system e drive is the default drive for my physical device. i actually have to change the drive letter of my physical drive to another letter that isnt already being used by my other devices or any of the already existing virtual drives. i then tell my virtual drive software to take over e and use it as a virtual drive. i then mount the proper image there. then it plays correctly. but this is extremely agravating because alot of my other apps also look for my physical device and assume its e drive, then when they look they find that it has become a different letter and give an error. so thats why i'd rather use a registry hack, or as a last resort, a no disc crack.

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"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy..........and ideas are bulletproof".

Re: Where Do I Find SimCity 4/Deluxe/Rush Hour Registry Entries?

my original thread was too generalized, i didnt realize that simcity might not install reg entries into some OSes like 7. so i wanted to be mor OS specific to see if someone might have a solution. and yes the game does of course work for me when using the originals.

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"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy..........and ideas are bulletproof".

Re: Where Do I Find SimCity 4/Deluxe/Rush Hour Registry Entries?

I never had any problems with the registry when running SC4 from a virtual CD drive. Just make sure to install the game from your virtual drive, then it should write that drive letter to the registry (in case you don't have access to it yourself due to some restrictions). If you're using Win7 64 bit, the entries for SC4 are located in HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Wow6432Node\Maxis\SimCity 4.

Re: Where Do I Find SimCity 4/Deluxe/Rush Hour Registry Entries?

Thanks for the info, i'll check into the reg entry you gave me. it appears that, at the moment, i've been locked out of my registry and neither regedit.exe or regedt32.exe will allow me to access it this time around. I do know, however, that the Registry was drastically changed by Microsoft in Vista and 7, especially in 64 bit versions, and that it is somewhat different in those 2 OSes than in earlier versions of Windows. So i apologize for starting a 2nd topic, i just figured that being more specific would get me a response that contains the answer. as for posting images, i do have a photobucket account but i'm not sure what is meant by posting the img tags. if someone could elaborate more on how to do this. in the meantime, i'll try to get into my registry and check to see if the entry you stated is there. also, i did indeed install from the original discs and it worked fine. but when mounting the image in a virtual drive it didnt work. so i uninstalled and then reinstalled from a virtual drive, but still had the same prob.

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"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy..........and ideas are bulletproof".